Peggle NightsReview

Share.

More of the same isn't so bad.

By Charles Onyett

Oh God, the colors! The ultra-saccharine hues of PopCap's Peggle made a big impact on Xbox Live Arcade earlier this year, unexpectedly drawing in droves of hardcore gamers to a casual experience. PopCap just released Peggle Nights, which turns out to be more of an expansion than a sequel, but retains the same ultra-addictive, "just one more game" quality of the original.

In case you've never played or heard of Peggle, here's the rundown: It's a kind of super-powered pachinko. Think Plinko from The Price is Right. The game is broken into different stages, each of which has a different pattern of pegs colored orange, blue, pink, and green. Your job is to fire a ball from the top of the screen and attempt to amass as many points as possible by hitting the pegs. After each ball eventually bounces to the screen's bottom, the tagged pegs disappear. Once all the orange pegs in a stage have been hit and cleared, you move on to the next stage.

When the sun goes down the Peggle Masters indulge their alter egos.

The catch is you only have a limited number of balls to clear the orange pegs, so you'll need to line up your shots to maximize the number of pegs hit. A lot of it is luck, but by hitting the green pegs you can activate a special attack, the functionality of which corresponds to whatever preposterously ebullient cartoon animal happens to be overlooking the board. The dragon, for instance, turns the ball into a fireball that can carve through rows of pegs without rebounding. The one new character in this version, a squid, can send an electric bolt through the peg layout, activating any pegs in a line extending to the screen's bottom.

Beyond that basic formula, there are other bonuses built in to keep things interesting. Tagging orange pegs on a long-range bounce gives you a bonus, gliding across enough rectangular pegs in a row gives you a super slide bonus, having your ball land in a moving bucket at the screen's bottom gives you a free shot, and whenever you manage to nail a bonus you can expect a bright starburst and number total to pop up on the screen with an accompanying cheery effect.

The sound effects, along with the brilliantly vibrant colors, play a crucial role in the game. Every time you hit a peg an effect resonates, with each a pitch higher than the last, sort of like the effects in Looney Tunes when characters are climbing stairs or creeping up on an adversary. This kind of design keeps you riveted to the screen, even though you're pretty much helpless to control much of anything after you've launched your shot. Yet you sit there in a gleeful stupor listening to the sounds build, watching the explosions of bonus points and hoping for the best, just as many watch the reels of a slot machine whir or the damage totals in an MMO float up above a target's head. Then there's the big payoff at the end: when the last orange peg is hit, the game screen zooms in, moves into slow motion to emphasize the importance of the moment, and from your speakers explodes a rendition of Beethoven's Ode to Joy alongside bright sparkles, polychromatic explosions, and eye-searing rainbows as point totals are tabulated to another sonic crescendo.

Even if you miss that last peg by a small margin, the screen still zooms in and drum roll sound effect is still played, and you'll find yourself moaning "aww" in disappointment along with the crowd in the game, like an NHL player who fired a slapshot just wide of the net. It's clear the folks over at PopCap knew exactly what they were doing when designing this title and everything's been pulled off remarkably well.

The new Peggle Master can send streaks of lightning shooting across the screen.

As far as Peggle Nights goes, it's basically the same game as Peggle...only at night. You get a slew of new boards which, this time around, seem to be more active, meaning there are more moving pegs and obstacles built into the boards. There's an adventure mode to play through that introduces you to each of the game's cartoon characters and their various powers and a challenge mode that imposes restrictions on each board that make them more difficult to complete. In all it's quite a bit of content and all addictively replayable.

Peggle Nights is accessed from Peggle's main menu, so you'll have to have downloaded the original game before you can explore the expansion.

The Verdict

Even though you ultimately don't have all that much control over how games of Peggle play out, PopCap still managed to create an engaging experience by infusing the addictive qualities of slot and pachinko machines into its title through a masterful implementation of sound effects and color. So while you can never predict exactly where the ball will bounce, you'll want to keep playing just to see if you can get it right the next time. With Peggle Nights, PopCap offers a bunch of new boards and a few new features, though the gameplay is more or less unchanged. Still, Peggle fans should absolutely dive in, and if you've never tried Peggle, you really should. Just make sure you've got some time to spare before you load it up.